


Every New Beginning (Comes from Some Other Beginning's End)

by AceQueenKing



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: 5 Springs/5 Falls/1 Summer, 5 Times, Complicated Relationships, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Trapped in a Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: 5 times Hades came early for Persephone before Orpheus, and the 1 time he did after the boy failed.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52
Collections: Fortune Favors: Round One— Rider-Waite-Smith





	Every New Beginning (Comes from Some Other Beginning's End)

  1. He’s early.



It’s almost fall, _almost. S_ he doesn’t think much about going when the leaves are turning, instead of when they’re on the ground, cold and dead under her feet. Her husband is _here_ ; she pulls his glasses off and tucks them in his pocket. “Hey lover,” she says. “I missed ya.”

“You mind?” He asks. She answers him with a kiss. No, she does not mind. She has missed him. It has been a long summer; she pushes him onto the train and pushes herself up into his lap. There are no more words on the subject.

In winter, she prepares to go a little early; five days early coming, well, five days early going. He pouts. He doesn’t like it. He protests it’s not time, it’s not right, it’s not just, it’s not fair, and, finally, when all those excuses fail: _I will be lonely, lover. Lover, I will be **so** lonely_. He is not a man accustomed to begging, except when she asks him to.

Her heart tugs; she smooths love paeans into his skin. She says _it is just a few short months_. She says _I love you_. He nods.

Then she’s gone.

* * *

  1. He’s early. Again.



This time, he kisses her breathless, doesn’t ask if it’s alright. He just kisses her at that stop like a young buck half his age, kisses her and winds his hands in her hair, then his hands in her skirts, kisses her like death sucking every bit of marrow from her bones. She’s on the train before she knows quite what’s happened; doesn’t quite realize just how early it is until they’re passing foliage barely even half-browned.

“Lover,” she says, “You’re early.”

“Couldn’t resist.” He strokes her face with a tenderness that damns her. “Missed ya.”

She packs up a little early. There’s a nasty row below.

It’s not the first one they’ve had, nor likely to be the last. _I got work to do_ , she says; _you could work here_ , he counters. He holds out both hands and she can tell he’s martyring himself, _poor Hades_ , he has only his wealth to clutch without her.

Works are said, right mean words. For the first time, they only agree to a ceasefire when she goes.

She comes to her mama’s home in a thundering squall; mama looks tired. “Trouble?” she asks, voice trembling.

Persephone just sighs.

* * *

  1. He’ s early.



This time, he grabs her hand in the fields themselves. Mama is beside herself, spitting fire at him. “ _You_ ,” mama squawks. “She didn’t ask you to come. Put her down. _Git!_ ”

He looks at her, desperate. Desperate enough that he’s shaking. “You want me to… _git_?” He asks, and she fears the broken glass-sound of his voice.

“It’s fine, mama,” she says; “you finish things for me, okay?” Mama gives her the evil eye.

She goes anyway.

She boards his train; he lays his heavy head in her lap.

“I love you,” she says. He says nothing.

That winter, all they do is fight.

It starts with a nasty surprise: he’s decided to spend his money to make the downstairs look like an upstairs, complete with little toiling mortals her husband has all but enslaved.

“For you,” he says.

“It’s horrible,” she says.

He spits fire back, empty justifications. He is so proud of his horror-show that she says a few things she shouldn’t.

So they fight.

She starts drinking to dull the ache of his voice.

The kiss when she leaves is forced, a quick peck. But when he murmurs _I love you_ , she believes him.

* * *

  1. He’s early.



It’s only June.

“That wasn’t six months! It wasn’t –” He hushes her up with a smile, has her on the train before mama even notices she’s gone.

“What the fuck?” She asks; she grasps his heavy shoulders, stares at his incomprehensible face as she lightly shakes him. “What. The. Fuck?”

“I miss you,” he says, big and obvious and true and sad. “Thought about how we left things last year and I…” He swallows, discomfort working that big jaw. “I had to be with you.”

“Okay,” she says, softening. “We can talk.”

But then they don’t.

They’re still fighting, a proper war now: furious battles where they poke one another with their words and then retreat to their corners to lick their wounds clean: him to his factories, her to her brand-new bar.

“Stay,” he begs every argument. “Stay.” Stay a day, stay a week, stay a month, stay, _stay_ , **_stay_** and he never listens when she tells him all the reasons why she _can’t_. 

Eventually she _has_ to go, and he waves to her half-heartedly as she leaves, and they don’t kiss at all.

Persephone waits until she is on the train, then she weeps.

* * *

  1. “You’re early,” she says.



It’s too hot a spring, the kind that promises trouble and trouble, this year, comes in the form of her husband, who comes way-the-fuck too early, just when she started livin’ it up topside, really.

“I missed ya,” he says, but it’s not a nice _I missed ya_ – not like it would have been a few years ago, just mean now, a reproachful _I missed you_ , with _but I shouldn’t have to_ buried underneath. 

He holds out a hand, and she goes, and she hates that it’s come down to just that, but it has.

She thinks, that winter, that it’s over.

They don’t talk beyond their arguments. He spends more and more time in his factories; she doesn’t recognize him there, that foreman who yells at his workers almost as much as he yells at her. He threatens to go find another lover, and then he does, some little hungry mouse-child. He makes a fool of them both and she thinks: this is the end.

But it isn’t. Orpheus comes, sings his song, and then Hades says, “It’s time for spring,” and then she goes, clutching her flower, and everything –

Well. Everything changes.

Maybe.

* * *

  1. He turns too early.



The boy turns, at the last step, at the last moment when things might – might – have gone a bit different. It’s proof; love ain’t enough. Persephone feels it, even up top. She shivers. Cold wind blows after that. Mighty cold.

Her husband comes soon after; maybe not a week and maybe not even a month, but soon enough to be too soon to matter. He holds out his hand.

“Come home with me,” Hades says, quietly. Despite the phrasing, she knows it is not a question.

She goes.

He holds her hand all the way down.

They don’t make it home.

She’s barely aware of some higher power’s intervention before it happens; the cut of a thread, the reversal of the thread through the needle. The Fates or her father or some other terror rumbles underneath their feet, and they look to one another. The world starts to spin, the train starts to move backwards.

All they can do is hold on tight. 

“I love you,” he says, though it comes out backwards. It doesn’t matter; she understands, she understands.

“Love you, too,” she says. “Always.”

They cling to one another until fate rips them apart.

* * *

7\. It’s quiet in her garden. There is a man there, head bowed, his hat in his hands. 


Persephone feels like she knows him, though she cannot say how. There’s something familiar to him, perhaps in the cut of his jaw, in the intense brown of his eyes.

“Come home with me,” he says.

“Why should I?” she says, defensive. "I don't know-"

He grabs her hand, presses it to his heart. It beats out a song: _la,la,la,la,la,la,la._ “Marry me,” he says. “Take my hand.”

She grabs it; no choice, she thinks. He feels like someone she has always known. Like some part of her soul she wasn’t aware, up to this point, that she was missing. She expects to feel happy when she holds his hand, but the feeling that it induces in her is more akin to a songbird in the snow.

“If you can sing,” she says, with a wink. “Well, maybe. Give me a melody. And...I’m Persephone.”

In the dawn, in her garden, he holds her; nervously, his hands just barely brushing against her hips. The song that comes from his lips is deep and dark, but unmistakably the beat of her heart.

The world begins anew.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fortune Favors Tarot Card fest. I asked for a reading based on the word _Chant_ and these were the cards I drew, with readings from [The Tarot Guide](http://www.thetarotguide.com/): 
> 
> The **Two of Cups Tarot card reversed** can signify a romance with someone who you are incompatible with. It can indicate that someone you are dating may blow hot and cold on you. You may find that they can’t get enough of you one minute and disappear or give you the cold shoulder the next. If you are in a relationship, the Two of Cups reversed is not a great omen as it can signify arguments, broken engagements, separation or divorce. It can signify that you and/or your partner have been taking the relationship for granted and not putting the work in. You may find yourself drawn to someone other than your partner. Alternately, you may find that you and your partner have become so co-dependent that it is creating resentment or arguments in your relationship. 
> 
> If you are in a relationship, **Judgement reversed** can indicate that you are avoiding making a decision about the relationship because of self-doubt. Whether this decision is about the relationship moving forward or ending, it is a decision that needs to be made. [...]The Judgement Tarot card reversed can also indicate issues caused by failure to learn from the past. Perhaps you and your partner have been through a rough patch and you feel like you should be closer now but you’re not. Ask yourself have you learned all you could from those past issues and are you applying that knowledge to your relationship?
> 
> If you are in a relationship, the **Page of Wands reversed** can indicate that setback in a relationship. This Minor Arcana card reversed can indicate that the initial romance has worn off and you are seriously considering if you and your partner have enough in common to make a relationship work. You may simply need to reinject the passion or get to know each other better to strengthen the relationship on a deeper level or you may decide to end it. [...] The Page of Wands reversed can sometimes indicate that your partner’s attention may be starting to wander or they may not be putting your feelings first and are being a little selfish or lazy.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Given the on point theming, I wanted to make something about how each season sort of changes their relationship, how it grows worse through time, but there's always a kernel of hope there, and there is always love, even if at times it is not the most positive depiction of it. One can only hope they'll find more happiness in the next go around!


End file.
